District of Columbia Slip and Fall Settlement Calculator
Estimate a slip and fall settlement under District of Columbia law. The calculator applies this jurisdiction's own comparative fault rule and damages ceilings, and every figure below is the one our verified data holds, with the statute behind it and the date we checked it.
What District of Columbia law does to your claim
Four things in state law shape a slip and fall claim: how long you have to file, how soon a government must be told when it owns the property, what happens if you were partly at fault, and whether the state puts a ceiling on what a jury can award. Here is what we hold for this one.
DC applies contributory negligence. Any plaintiff fault bars recovery.
District of Columbia common law; Wingfield v. People's Drug Store, Inc., 379 A.2d 685 (D.C. 1977)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
An action for unliquidated damages may not be maintained against the District of Columbia unless written notice of the time, place, cause and circumstances of the injury is given to the Mayor within six months after it. A Metropolitan Police Department report made in the regular course of duty is sufficient notice. D.C. Code § 12-309(a) reads: “an action may not be maintained against the District of Columbia for unliquidated damages to person or property unless, within six months after the injury or damage was sustained, the claimant, his agent, or attorney has given notice in writing to the Mayor of the District of Columbia of the approximate time, place, cause, and circumstances of the injury or damage. A report in writing by the Metropolitan Police Department, in regular course of duty, is a sufficient notice under this section.” We read this section only, so it is not a complete account of suing a government in District of Columbia.
D.C. Code § 12-309(a)·Last reviewed 2026-10-16
None on record means our verified data holds no figure of this kind for this state. It is not a finding that no limit could apply to your claim.
What partial fault costs you in District of Columbia
The same claim, fracture with surgery, several months of recovery, run through the calculator above four times, with nothing changed but the share of fault assigned to the claimant. The numbers are the engine's output, not an editorial claim about what these cases are worth.
One case, run through the calculator above four times with only the claimant's share of fault changed, under District of Columbia law. No coverage ceiling is applied, because we would be inventing the at-fault party's policy. These shares illustrate the rule; they are not an estimate of your own fault.
Every District of Columbia deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the District of Columbia periods in our verified data, with the statute behind each one. A deadline is the outside limit, never a target, and other rules can shorten it.
D.C. Code § 12-301(8)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorD.C. Code § 12-301(8)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorD.C. Code § 16-2702·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorD.C. Code § 32-1532·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorD.C. Code § 12-301(8)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorDistrict of Columbia against the rest of the country
Every count below is read from our state-law data across all 51 jurisdictions, so it moves when the data does. What you will not find here is an average settlement figure: the only one we could compute is a model, and a model presented as a measurement is not a fact.
- 6 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply the contributory negligence rule, and District of Columbia is one of them.
- Its 3 years to file is longer than the 2 years that 25 jurisdictions use. Across the 51 jurisdictions the deadline for this case type runs from 1 year to 6 years.
- We have read the official text of 30 jurisdictions' rules on the notice or claim a government must receive before an injury suit, and District of Columbia is one of them: 6 months, under D.C. Code § 12-309(a).
- 7 of the 51 jurisdictions limit non-economic damages (pain and suffering) in our data and District of Columbia is not among them, so an estimate here is not held down by a ceiling we hold.
Comparisons are drawn from the legal levers that actually move a case value, not from closed-case data, which we do not hold. See the full methodology
District of Columbia calculators
District of Columbia Slip and Fall questions
Every document behind our state injury law figures, each linked with the date we last read it, is listed on our State Injury Law research sources page.